


since i stopped needing you

by ihopethatyouburn



Category: Scandal (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 03:45:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14179830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ihopethatyouburn/pseuds/ihopethatyouburn
Summary: "Liv was gone and my world was on fire and you were color-coding files and making charts. You were nowhere - you killed us and you know it."Abby picks up the pieces of her life after Olivia leaves at the end of Season 3.





	since i stopped needing you

**Author's Note:**

> Partially inspired by the scene in 4x01 where David asks Abby's opinion about accepting Fitz's Attorney General offer:
> 
> "They didn't tell me that they offered you Attorney General. I didn't know - I'm not on the inside. But if they had, I would have said that David Rosen is a good and honest man who will uphold the Constitution. I would have said that David Rosen loves the law. He loves justice. Apparently more than he loves me! 
> 
> You are so obsessed with those stupid B-613 files. Liv was gone and my world was on fire and you were color-coding files and making charts. You were nowhere - you killed us and you know it."

Abby always thought the phrase “struck dumb” was just that, dumb. She’s always been the one with a snarky quip, eager to get in the last word. But right now, she’s standing frozen in the OPA conference room like in a bad comedy movie, with a single refrain bouncing around her head:  _ Liv can’t leave Liv can’t leave Liv can’t leave... _

She’s not naive enough to think Liv would stay with OPA forever, she always expected her best friend would find her way back to the White House, but never had she expected Liv would just vanish, and especially not off the map entirely. Abby takes a shaky breath, the fist slowly loosening around her windpipe.

“Over a cliff, Liv, over a cliff!” she forces out. “We went over a cliff for you, and you just walk out on us?”  _ Don’t you dare leave, _ is what she wants to scream, but she doesn’t want to sound desperate, even with their fifteen years of shared history since law school.

Abby learned early never to beg people to stay, saw that it only served to deepen her own shame of dependence. She laughs sometimes at how absurdly guarded she is, can hear the echoes of her college friends joking “Damn, you hurt you?”, but it doesn’t make honesty any easier, especially not with someone like Liv: a warrior, a gladiator, single-minded in getting what she wants and refusing to look back at the damage.

“You’ll be taken care of,” Olivia repeats. “Financially ー anything you need. My father said he’ll take care of everything.”

The mention of Liv’s father finally loosens Abby’s tongue all the way. “Your father is a monster,” she spits as terror solidifies in her stomach. If Rowan is involved, there’s no one who can talk Liv out of leaving. “You’re trusting him with your life?”

The regret in Olivia’s eyes hardens at that, seeming to signal:  _ So we’re taking the hard way out then _ . “He’s my father.”

“Just go. Run to Daddy,” Abby snarks as she turns on her heel and stalks out of the conference room.

Though she’s trying to make a furious and graceful exit, she can feel her knees shaking, a lump forming in her throat she can’t manage to swallow. Liv lets her go, though Abby wishes she would make her stay and fight, trying to convince her with the usual torrent of words that she has a trustworthy air-tight plan.

She grabs her bag from her office and heads directly for the elevator, punching the down button angrily as she wishes for a more active escape. She reaches for her phone to keep her body moving, hoping for any distraction, a call from David, but her only notifications are from her BNC news app. Instead, she listens to the elevator creaking up to the top floor. When it arrives she slams the grate shut, glaring towards Liv still standing in the conference room.

Abby calls David on her drive home, hoping the sound of his voice will make her breathing a little less shaky, but the call goes to voicemail and she throws her phone on the seat in frustration.

When she walks in the door to their apartment she goes straight into hibernation mode, kicks off her shoes in the living room and rips off her skirt and tights so she can breathe better. She digs through her drawers to find her Yale field hockey shirt and her favorite yoga pants, the ones she’s washed so often she wore a hole in the right thigh.  _ Bed _ , she thinks nonsensically, crawling under the covers and trying to stop the sting of tears of betrayal.

The next thing she remembers is David getting home, yelling “Abbs?” confusedly into the dark apartment. He pivots to walk into the bedroom and finds her sniffling, makeup no doubt smeared all over her face and pillowcase. His eyes grow wide when he sees her, his steps get lighter until he vaults himself onto the bed and lays down facing her.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, bewildered.

“Liv -” Abby croaks out. She sees David start at Olivia’s name, always on edge about her, always unsure what she’d do next. “She’s leaving the country. For good, she says.”

She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, didn’t want to cement Liv’s fate by telling anyone else about it, but she’s really crying now, and David thankfully swallows whatever retort he’d been planning and pulls her onto his chest, one hand rubbing small circles on her back.

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispers over and over into her hair.

Abby wakes up the next morning with a crying hangover, her head pounding. She gathers all of her strength to roll out of bed and walk towards the shower. David’s standing in the kitchen, his head jerking up from his coffee as soon as he hears her footsteps.

“Hi,” he says cautiously, tenderly. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine?” she mumbles, the question mark apparent.

“I made you a breakfast sandwich, I thought maybe you’d want comfort food.”

“Thank you. Truly.” Abby’s voice wobbles and she bites the inside of her cheek, already embarrassed by her scene last night, with no desire to repeat it.

David seems to sense that she doesn’t want to dwell on last night and stands up from his chair, grabs his coffee. “I have to go to work, but call me if you need me. Really.” He kisses her cheek and lets the door slam shut behind him, the sound echoing in Abby’s dehydrated brain.

+++++

Abby spends the next few days in the apartment, ignoring Quinn’s incessant voicemails asking her to meet for coffee so they can “figure this out.” She’s not sure what Quinn means, what she could possibly be planning. Liv’s phone has been disconnected, and Jake’s too, so Abby assumes she’s gone for good; she doesn’t have the energy to care where they went, since they so clearly wanted to be as far away from DC as possible.

Quinn’s voicemails get less frantic, but not fewer in volume; she says she tracked Liv and Jake’s phones to Frankfurt before the disappeared, keeps wondering where they could have gone from there. Though Abby would never admit it, only occasionally confirms receipt of Quinn’s ramblings via text, she feels comforted by all the calls, happy that someone is fighting to keep alive whatever is left of OPA. Part of her wants to help, but she’s just so bone-tired, and another part of her is still vindictive, furious that Liv would leave without a proper goodbye.

David seems confused, never having seen her as laconic as she is now, but is supportive anyway, calls her in the middle of the day, kisses her forehead when she curls into his lap while he’s trying to watch the news, rubs her back until she falls asleep at night. Abby tries to apologize for her clinginess, but David is so infuriatingly good that he brushes it off immediately.

“Olivia has been the most important person in your life for a very long time. She’s gone and you’re figuring out how to be okay. Don’t apologize.”

+++++

A few days later everything changes with the delivery of seventy-five nondescript file boxes that say Acme Paper on the side, almost laughably unthreatening. Abby arrives home after picking up dinner to find David loading boxes into the guest room he uses as office space.

“David, what’s going on?” she asks as she has to vault over the wheeled cart to get in the door. His face is white but determined as he stacks boxes against the wall.

“Don’t,” he cautions as she goes to take the lid off the box nearest her, catching her hand in his. “Jake had these sent to me, I guess he put in the order right before he left. These are B613 case files. I don’t want you looking at them.”

“What?” she repeats.

“You need to maintain plausible deniability.”

Abby rolls her eyes and backs away, hating his tone but knowing enough to understand that he’s right.

That night, he locks himself in the guest room, so full of boxes that can’t even pull out the desk chair and has to sit on the bed to read anything. Abby can hear him through the walls, frantically rearranging piles and muttering. She doesn’t know exactly what he’s saying, but the cadence and pitch is enough to tell that the files are as terrifying as she’d guessed.

David comes out for air a few hours later, dazed, his face weary. Abby watches from the couch as he fills a glass with water and chugs it, staring at the empty glass afterwards like he’s trying to decipher meaning from it. She approaches him slowly, the way she’d go up to a stray cat, trying hard not to startle him.

“So what are you planning on doing with those files?” she asks.

“Get justice, Abby! I can’t just let this entire organization exist right under my nose, the things I read just now are terrifying, and it’s my job to shut it down.” He continues to ramble about patriotism and the law and wearing the white hat, and Abby can tell he’s barely in the room with her, almost quaking with excitement at the opportunity to bring down B613.

He heads back into the guest room and slams the door in his haste, a quick sucker punch to the gut. Her first instinct is to call Liv to complain, to ask her why Jake had been self-destructive enough to send the files, find out what he was trying to achieve, but she freezes with her hand halfway to her phone on the counter. Liv is gone, and the overloud TV commercial for vacuum cleaners in the background just underscores how alone she is.

+++++

The days turn into weeks as all of the structure Abby is used to crumbles underneath her. With no job, no Olivia, and increasingly no David around to ask for advice on next steps, she tries to channel her uncertainty about the future into small, measurable tasks. She makes lists, even of household tasks: do laundry, buy more non-work clothes, figure out login password for the Washington Post. She falls down the rabbit hole of food blogs and spends most of her time in the kitchen, trying more and more complicated dessert recipes. She likes that every recipe is broken down into manageable chunks, an easy enough road map to processes that had been foreign to her just weeks earlier, like how to prevent a souffle from caving in after taking it from the oven.

David pretends to be sorry he’s neglecting her, starts bringing home dinner from her favorite takeout places, crawls into bed to kiss her softly after he’s done color-coding his files for the night, but Abby can tell he’s scheming, trying to come up with the best way to punish the ringleaders of B613.

Quinn keeps calling. Abby picks up sporadically, but they always have the same conversation about finding Olivia, with no new leads. Discouraged in her search, Quinn tries to convince Abby that they can continue OPA themselves, but Abby shuts her down quickly, infuriated by her blind optimism.

“Quinn.” Abby cuts her off mid-sentence, laying on the living room couch with her legs kicked up against the wall, dangerous toes nudging the framed art hanging there. “I know you feel indebted to Liv, like you have to find her or carry on her legacy or whatever, but no one in this town will pay us what we need to survive without Olivia. You should find a new job.”

She hangs up and tosses her phone down next to her, a tightness in her chest at the ease with which she’d barked at Quinn to get a job - she’d gotten into the habit of taking midday naps after a string of rejections from her own halfhearted applications.

David puts an outer lock on the guest room door, extra careful to guard his super-secret B613 files. It’s kind of laughable, because he knows she can pick a combination lock, but Abby can tell it’s more for the statement -  _ do not concern yourself with this, I will find justice, but it’s not safe for you.  _ They barely see each other, despite sleeping in the same bed, because he gets home from work and immediately shuts himself away with his files, rarely even remembering to eat and certainly not to ask her about her day or her job search.

They stop going to dinner, going on runs, going anywhere together really, both of them spinning out of control without enough presence of mind to pull the other back. In an effort to be helpful, Abby’s mom sends her an article: 15 do-it-yourself activities, kitschy craft projects her Westport-born-and-bred WASP of a mother would never be caught dead doing. Abby guesses it’s her own fault for framing her time out of work as a “time to try new things” during their bi-weekly fifteen-minute phone call. When her mother asks about “that David,” always seemingly struggling to remember his name, Abby vagues that he’s doing well at work, and is busy with a new big case. She’s desperate enough to complain to someone that she considers telling her mom about their growing distance, but instead she fakes a doctor’s appointment and hangs up, eats two brownies and takes a nap at 2pm.

In the middle of one dangerously quiet Sunday afternoon, Abby is busy making cupcake icing, using the electric mixer she probably doesn’t need but likes the sound of. She’s frosting the first few cupcakes, chocolate ganache with mocha icing, when David ambles out of The B613 Room in a coffee-stained Dartmouth shirt that’s starting to fray around the collar. A few weeks ago, Abby would’ve forced him to take it off and let her wash it, but she’s given up taking care of him. He barely acknowledges her presence but reaches for a cupcake, jumping at the sharp sound of her voice.

“Stop,” she snaps. “Those aren’t finished yet. Find your own food.”

“Sorry,” he throws back, clearly more cranky than sorry. “I wouldn’t want to upset your precious baking process.”

He’s so petty she almost starts to laugh, his hands on his hips in a way that’s more adorable than imposing. She wants so badly to put her arms around him and kiss him, to whisper that his shirt is getting too ratty and needs to come off. If it were a month ago she would have done just that, and he would’ve laughed, his thumbs tracing patterns right above her hipbones, and said it would only be fair if her pants came off too, one hand unbuttoning her jeans. She’d roll her eyes but kiss him again, hard, and giggle as he pulled her into the bedroom.

But they’ve barely touched in weeks, so Abby just instructs, “Come back in five minutes,” in the same impersonal tone she gives tourists who ask her for directions to the closest metro station.

+++++

Quinn’s calls trail off to every four or five days, and alternate between being concerned about Huck, working as an IT associate at a tech store, and tracking Olivia, convinced she’s narrowing down Liv’s location based on wine orders. Abby half-listens as Quinn chatters, usually offering little in support, but Quinn is content just to talk at someone.

Abby hangs up from her latest Quinn call and gets into the shower, settling in for the warm twenty minutes of abstract contemplation she’s grown used to now that she has nowhere to be every day, and tries to decide if she cares enough to pluck her eyebrows after she gets out.

All of her mundane thoughts fly out of her in head in an instant when she sees her phone light up with a voicemail - from the White House switchboard. Her heart leaps into her chest as she gets dressed as quickly as possible, feeling too twitchy to listen to anything from the White House while naked.

The message is simple, matter-of-fact, and don’t even state her name or a callback number: “Hello, this is Cyrus Beene calling. We are looking for a new White House press secretary to start in a few days, and the president is interested in meeting with you. Do you have time to come up for an interview this afternoon?”

Abby listens to the message four times in disbelief. She’d never expected an interview to fall into her lap, much less from the White House, and she can’t imagine why the president would have any thoughts about her at all. Because of Olivia, probably, talking about old case work, and a flicker of anger flits through her body; she wouldn’t need a new job at all if Liv hadn’t decided to abandon her. She’s been gone almost a month now, and even though Abby is sure she’s not gone for good, it’s gotten harder to guess how long it’ll be until she’s back.

The rage at Olivia fuels her, makes her call Cyrus back and schedule an appointment for 3pm that afternoon, in four hours. She rips through her closet until she finds her nicest and cleanest black skirt and suit jacket. Once her outfit is hanging ready on her closet door, she grabs her laptop. She hasn’t had an interview in years, since before OPA, let alone for a White House position, so she can’t imagine what the president might ask her, or if she should bring copies of her resume, though it almost feels juvenile to do so when her appointment was requested by the president himself. She prints five copies anyway and tucks them in the rarely used leather-bound portfolio her mother bought her for her law school graduation just in case.

The interview isn’t nearly as terrifying as she’d imagined on the drive over, but she’s unnerved that Cyrus shepherds her into the Oval Office, and suddenly she’s sitting on the couch next to the president who somehow looks even angrier up close.

“Hello, Mr. President.” Abby offers her hand and tries her best to appear confident despite her slightly shaking legs. It’s not like this is the first conversation they’ve had; they met a few times while Liv was working on his campaign, back when he was still governor, but still: now he’s the president, always more of an idea than a real man.

“Abby. Thanks for coming in.” His hand is surprisingly warm, not like the handshake with a statue she was expecting.

“Of course!” she takes a deep breath, reminds herself to reign in the chipper attitude - she’s in the Oval Office, not auditions to be a contestant on The Bachelor. “I, um - Cyrus told me there’s an opening for press secretary.”

The president had been slowly replacing his entire staff in the past month; the press said it was out of grief after his son died, but Abby’s pretty sure the rampage is also about losing Liv. He starts to talk about the job and why he wanted to bring Abby in, that people speak very highly of her. Abby almost laughs at that because the “people” he’s referring to definitely just means Liv, but he can’t bring himself to say her name.

“I especially appreciated the work you did to bring down Reston,” the president says with a wry smile. “That security tape of him with his wife was a great find.”

Abby starts at the compliment, surprised he even knows she helped expose Reston. She’d have guessed he’d attribute that win to Leo or even to Olivia, but his praise shows one of the reasons he’d gotten elected: a true memory for faces and gratitude that lasts.

She slowly realizes that this isn’t just an interview; Cyrus is talking about start dates and getting her the proper security clearance. She hasn’t even officially accepted, but neither of them seem to consider she might refuse, barrelling ahead with plans. She leaves the Oval Office an hour later, thanking both of them profusely, but with a nagging doubt at the back of her mind: she only got the job offer because of Olivia, because the president thinks Abby might have heard from her, because Olivia planted these seeds before she left.

She wanders the White House grounds, angry at herself for jumping to Liv, for making the first good thing in a month about her. The president of the United States wouldn’t hire Abby as press secretary if she hadn’t proved she’d be capable; it’s not like a recommendation from Olivia would affect her abilities, her confidence, her conscientiousness. All qualms aside, the president asked for Abby specifically, and she can’t possibly turn her back on him.

She strides back to her car happily, true excitement ballooning up in her chest for the first time in weeks.

+++++

David looks surprised when she arrives back at the apartment, squinting at her over the open refrigerator door. “Did you have an interview?”

“You’re home early,” is all she responds with as she sinks down on the couch, testing the waters, not sure how friendly they’ve decided to be.

“I was in court but the judge dismissed us early. Where was your interview?”

Abby feels herself grinning, the day’s events finally starting to sink in. “It’s the weirdest story, I know, but I got a call from Cyrus Beene today asking if I could come meet with the president. And I went, obviously, and they offered me press secretary,” she explains.

“Oh.” David sounds confused and upset, his eyebrows furrowed as he sits down on the other end of the couch. “Well, you’re not going to take it, right?”

Abby’s eyes flash suspiciously, dread forming in her stomach. “Why wouldn’t I take it?”

“You’re a Democrat! You’re honestly saying you’d happily serve in Fitzgerald Grant’s administration?” David asks incredulously.

“He asked for me personally! When the president himself asks you to be his press secretary - or actually, he didn’t even ask me as much as tell me when I’d be starting - you can’t tell him no.”

“Do I have to be worried about you now as one of his Republican minions? You’re better than that.”

“What the fuck, David?” Abby shouts, harshly enough to mask the tears that are forming. “You’re not the ultimate judge of everything that’s right and good. I thought you’d be happy for me.”

“I just don’t know what they want with you ー”

“Want with me?” she almost cackles. “What does that mean? Do you think I can’t do it?”

She can see the fear in David’s eyes as he tries to backtrack. “Of course I think you can do it, you’d be a kickass press secretary. But these men, especially Cyrus, never do favors for anyone. You know that. They’re going to need you on their side and I don’t want to think about what you’ll need to do to prove your loyalty.”

“Well, thanks for your concern, I guess, but I don’t need it.” Abby gets up from the couch stiffly and crosses her arms. “Of course our longest conversation in almost a month would be a fight,” she mutters.

David opens his mouth to protest, but Abby cuts him off, suddenly furious. “Yes, that’s true, this has been our longest conversation. You’ve been shut in that stupid guest room for weeks, trying to fight for justice or whatever bullshit, but I could’ve really used your support. You’re so focused on being good, on doing your part, that the only way I can get your attention is to get a job at the White House.”

“That’s not fair -”

“What’s not fair?” Abby seethes. “I was sad and I was lost but you decided my pain wasn’t as important to you. I can’t believe I thought we could have a normal relationship, but I guess work is always more important.”

“You have to stop with all of this ‘normal boyfriend’ stuff. There is no real ‘normal’ relationship ー it’s just something you idealize and use to dictate my behavior and make me do favors for you. I’m not here to fix you.”

David is so scarily calm, but Abby can feel her entire body buzzing with nerves, like she’s had two too many cups of coffee and she’s almost jumping out of her skin. “That’s not ー that’s not what I asked for,” she says, trying to keep her voice as even as possible to match him, when she wants to scream. “You abandoned me when I needed you most, when you knew I needed you, because you realized you love something else more ー the law. And I’m used to that. It happens all the time, but I had really hoped this would be different. I thought with you it would be different.” She takes a deep, shuddering breath, trying to get control over her voice, the half-formed escape plans she’d considered during her loneliest days giving her purpose.

“I can’t do this anymore, David. I have to move out.”

“Abby,” he protests softly. “Don’t do this.”

“Why not? There isn’t one good reason why I should stay.”

“I love you,” he offers, but without any strength behind it, like he knows it won’t work.

“You hurt me! Over and over again! So you don’t get to stop me from leaving.”

With that, she stalks into the bedroom, pulls her biggest tote out of her closet and throws in a few t-shirts, her favorite Lulu leggings, and her laptop. She unhooks two work dresses from the closet still in dry-cleaning plastic and throws them over one arm.

“See you around, I guess,” she snarks at David as she slams out the front door.

Once in her car, Abby starts to cry, heaving sobs of disappointment. It starts to rain as she pulls out of her parking spot, icy and awful, and her fingers threaten to turn numb on the steering wheel. She drives almost on autopilot, without questioning her destination: Liv’s apartment.

On one of Quinn’s recent phone calls, she mentioned that Olivia’s apartment never went on the market, and when she hacked into the management company’s servers she found that the past two months’ rent had been paid by Eli Pope. Abby is now grateful she never took her spare key to Liv’s apartment off her key ring, first too used to the weight and then too stubborn to admit defeat. She figures she’ll crash there for a night or two until she can figure out her next step.

When she unlocks the door she sees dust swirling in the light from the moon, the living room smelling like a disconcerting combination of musty attic and the slightest hint of Olivia’s perfume. Half of her possessions are boxed up neatly, her mattress bare and most of her books off the shelves, but Abby opens the closet door and finds a row of cashmere sweaters hanging neatly in dry cleaning plastic, with tags dated in October. The sight makes her feel better, more assurance that Liv could be back any time she chooses.

The afternoon passes quickly. Abby shakes herself into work mode quickly, pulling out her laptop and doing research on current policy and bills on the Senate floor using wifi stolen from the apartment directly below her.

David calls around nine, and again ten minutes later, the second time leaving a forlorn voicemail. “Abby? Please pick up your phone. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything I did to hurt you… Just come back home.” He sounds like he’s been drinking, his voice a slurred whine, conveniently nonspecific about exactly why Abby is hurting. She ignores his pathetic blanket apology and turns her phone on silent. He texts her thirty minutes after that, just asking her to confirm that she has somewhere to stay.

DR:  _ At least let me know that you’re okay and you know where you’re staying tonight. _

AW:  _ I’m safe. Don’t worry. _

DR:  _ I love you. _

She turns her phone off and pulls a blanket out of the still-stocked linen closet. She falls asleep quickly and peacefully, curled up on the couch, the tension slowly starting to leave her shoulders.

+++++

Abby’s first day as press secretary passes in a blur, mostly of her practically galloping behind Cyrus to keep his pace in her skirt that’s too tight around the knees for all of the walking. She gets handed exactly thirty-four briefing packets, ranging from a few pages to a full binder, all of which she’s expected to be fully informed about \- foreign policy, healthcare legislation, a Department of Education budget review. 

She gets lucky with her first press briefing, an easy announcement about a state dinner the president is throwing for the Prime Minister of Japan and a few small-scale economic policy updates. Fists clenched to stop her hands from shaking, she walks up to the podium, her stomach in knots ー is she supposed to introduce herself? What should she say? She wishes she’d prepared something, but she hadn’t thought about all the mundanities like this. Abby takes a moment to sip from the water glass on the podium next to her notepad as the noise of chatting reporters dies down.

_ Okay, you can do this. You have to do this, _ she thinks sternly to herself.  _ Short and sweet. _

“Hi everyone,” she starts, gripping the sides of the podium for support, her knuckles turning white. “I’m Abby Whelan, and as you’ve probably heard, I’m the new press secretary. I’m looking forward to seeing all of you every day.”

She cringes inside at that bland intro, but she won’t let herself dwell on it, just goes right into her state dinner announcement. The journalists don’t wait for her to ask for questions, just raise their hands immediately to clarify who might be coming, and start asking out loud before she calls on anyone. The sheer volume of noise directed at her is overwhelming, and she stares at the crowd of twenty or thirty journalists a few seconds too long, probably giving away that she’s terrified.

_ Get a fucking grip _ , she instructs herself, clenching her jaw. She’s watched hours of C-SPAN footage, of press conferences in his very briefing room; Liv has taken questions at this podium countless times with seemingly no trouble at all. Abby prides herself on being skillful with the press, but she’s only dealt with a few reporters at once, about one case at a time, usually something she’s handling for OPA. These twenty reporters feel much more hostile somehow. All the  _ shouting _ .

The memory of Olivia as communications director fortifies her, and she tries to channel her friend’s grace as she focuses on a man in the second row who looks harmless enough. One she has a target, her shoulders relax the tiniest bit, though her hands still have a death grip on the podium.

"Yes, right there in the glasses,” she nods at him. “I promise I’ll learn names.” Harmless Dude asks a simple question about the ambassador from India attending the state dinner, which she’s easily able to dodge by saying she will give updates as she learns more information.

Cyrus appears in the back doorway and gives her a “hurry it along” hand signal, for which she’s grateful. She quickly makes her way through a dense update on corporate tax policy and says her goodbyes, heading towards Cyrus and her next meeting with sweaty palms but a triumphant sense of accomplishment.

+++++

The next few days pass slowly, as Abby tries valiantly to keep up with all of the new briefing books she’s given, leaving her office only to go to the Oval or the press room. She sits in on meetings with the president, doing her best to keep up and take attentive notes, but she can’t help but imagine what Olivia would do in her position, what she would say, how she would advise the president. Not that Abby is in any position to advise, not yet, but she’s sure Liv would have walked in there with opinions. She leaves every meeting feeling the same lung-crushing anxiety she used to get during finals, racing against the clock to finish an exam, never to her own satisfaction. The challenge is exciting, though, after over a month of unemployment baking in her apartment. She stays until at least 9pm every night, trying to get a handle on diplomatic relations with Bangladesh, almost tempted to make flashcards to help her remember everything, old-school, comforting. 

She’s sleeping in Olivia’s apartment temporarily, until she has more than thirty free minutes to look at new places, just until the weekend. Of course she’d been too much of a proud idiot to consider the consequences of storming out of her and David’s apartment two days before starting a new job, but she can’t even think about seeing him yet, let alone trying to sleep there.

David keeps calling her, twice a day at least, sometimes leaving plaintive voicemails, which she’d stopped listening to after number three. He sounds genuinely concerned, and asks how the White House is treating her, but Abby knows if she picks up the phone and hears his voice in real time she’ll start crying. And she quite literally doesn’t have time for crying. Instead, she texts him:

AW:  _ Please stop calling me. I need some space. _

David opens the text in less than two minutes, the first time in months she’s been glad for his read receipts. Abby watches the gray dots pop up as he starts to type, but apparently decides against it because his reply doesn’t come for another twenty minutes.

DR:  _ Call me when you’re ready to talk. I bet you’re kicking ass at the White House. xo _

Abby rolls her eyes at his fake encouragement and doesn’t reply, partly because she’s busy but mostly because she doesn’t have a retort that won’t end in an unnecessary repetitive argument. The “xo” sticks with her, an uncharacteristic move for David over text, definitely calculated but effective, and has her daydreaming wistfully about going back to his apartment and crawling into bed next to him.

Her phone rings and jolts her back to reality, her assistant confirming her four-hour block of back-to-back meetings for tomorrow. The marathon is daunting, but at least she’ll be so busy she can pretend she feels numb.

+++++

She drags herself out of hell with her fingernails, forcing herself to read just one more briefing packet, answer one more hard question at the press podium, challenge Cyrus just one more time. She continues to break things into small, manageable steps, by scheduling her days down to the half hour, even at home. The president still doesn’t know her name, keeps calling her Gabby, but she starts to feel more confident, jokes around in the press room, waves hello to a few of the reporters in the hallways. She still eats lunch alone, but the silence is peaceful.

Her new apartment is bare and echoes loudly until she orders some throw rugs online, too busy to actually go to a store and look at any, hoping they fit the living room and foyer she’s barely spent any time in. She rolls them out at 6am one morning before work, finishes fifteen minutes before anticipated, and rewards herself by running an extra two miles around the park a few blocks from her building.

Winter hits in full force, no snow yet but bitter biting cold, and Abby buys herself a gorgeous plum coat as a Christmas present, throwing away the boring black pea coat she’d been sheepishly wearing. She walks taller, refusing to feel the cold against her legs that are bare except for tights, walking head-on into the wind.

+++++

Slowly, she stops looking for Liv out of the corner of her eye every time she walks down a hallway, stops doing a double take every time she sees a flash of white and wavy brown hair. An entire week goes by where Abby doesn’t think about Olivia at all, only focuses on being the best fucking press secretary possible, the most prepared, the most proactive. The security guard at the front gate learns her name, stops asking her about “Miss Pope,” and accepts that she’s here for the long haul. 

Tour groups come through the White House five times a day, and Abby begins to find joy in their open-faced awe. The first few weeks she’d felt like a fraud, convinced someone would have done enough research to know that she’d just started her job, would laugh in her face if introduced. But one mid-January day, she hears the whispers of a group walking by her office, and she feels a sense of peace when the tour guide announces, “This is our press secretary’s office. Abby Whelan.”

Abby waves and smiles through her office window. Of course, her shoulders are still tight from stress, so tight no masseuse will be able to work out all the knots, but she finally feels like she has all of the answers - or, at least, can answer any question with appropriate diplomatic bullshit. She spins around slowly in her chair, enjoying the soft rug beneath her stocking feet.

“Finally,” she whispers. “It feels right.”


End file.
